Oxwall Plugin Development Examples and Public Repository

While the product team is deep in Oxwall 1.6, we have an idea of what third party developers could do in the meantime.

Oxwall plugin skeleton

Newbie in Oxwall development? We were thinking of you. Today we want to introduce probably the easiest and fastest way for you to start and get up to speed with the platform. Experienced Oxwall developer will also find it useful to complete and refine their knowledge.

Here goes Oxwall plugin skeleton. Its name speaks for itself — this plugin implements a carcass for real world plugins, demonstrating working examples of various pieces of Oxwall functionality. It tackles:

File structure

Developer Tools

plugin.xml

Routing

Localization

Forms

Database

File storage

Sending email

Notifications

Newsfeed

Floatbox

Widgets

Access Level

Profile Questions

Cron jobs

Ping

Plugin installation/activation

As you can see, the range of functionality is extensive. It should help you create plugins of any levels of complexity — all with the best practices from the Oxwall dev team. Benefits? Better compatibility, less inter-plugin conflicts, faster store review times, and ultimately, better user experience.

How to start:

Download and install the plugin on a test setup (not on your live site!);

Sign in as admin, open mysite.com/skeleton URL;

Find what you are interested in, say Database;

View how the example works, and find listed code files implementing the example. All of this Oxwall plugin sample code is self-explanatory. Non-intuitive situations are commented along right in the code.

Development for Oxwall can be easier and/or trickier than you think. See how we do it, do it with us, and create new plugins for the Oxwall Store!

Oxwall public repository

Apart from your own Oxwall plugins, this new knowledge can also have a good use. From now on, developers can submit patches to the stable branch, if they find bugs, inconsistencies, or optimization opportunities.

So, developers, we are waiting for your contributions. Oh, and don’t forget about Oxwall coding standards while creating your patches and plugins.

As a real open source project, we are gradually opening up and stepping towards decentralization. So, we think it’s crucial to enhance and maintain communication with developers through code. Exciting times to be a part of Oxwall movement!